I made the oatmeal banana bar... they turned out super dry and tasted like eating sand. I don't know what I did wrong.

The oatmeal was good. The zucchini sandwiches were great!

Question: When making the soup it says to sauté the onions. It didn't say to use any oil, so I just used a little veggie broth. They burnt quickly. I know this kickstart is supposed to help lose weight, but doesn't it call for a little oil or butter substitute to make the bars not so dry and the veggies cook better?

My suggestion for sauteing the onions is to "steam fry" them. Use water in a nonstick skillet, adding more as needed so that the pan doesn't go dry. That's when the onions will burn. Keep an eye on them and don't jack the heat up too high. Patience!

I made the oatmeal banana bar... they turned out super dry and tasted like eating sand. I don't know what I did wrong.

The oatmeal was good. The zucchini sandwiches were great!

Question: When making the soup it says to sauté the onions. It didn't say to use any oil, so I just used a little veggie broth. They burnt quickly. I know this kickstart is supposed to help lose weight, but doesn't it call for a little oil or butter substitute to make the bars not so dry and the veggies cook better?

Water is probably better for sautéing the onions in this case - the naturally occurring sugars in a veg stock might contribute to burning. Use stock for things like cooking rice and all. Also, turn down the heat and go slowly. It should take probably 5 minutes or so to sauté onions - we're used to the hurry up life and figure high heat, cook fast, get on with it.

No, no oil or margarine is needed - unless the rest of your eating is SO low in fat that you need to supplement (or if you're pregnant or nursing, where fat needs are different). Generally speaking, the menu recipes work out to about 10% of calories from fat which is the target range.

I haven't made the banana bars but my off the cuff guess is that you used quick cooking oats instead of rolled oats (it's an easy mistake - the packaging looks virtually identical except for the word "quick" BTDT). The difference between rolled, quick, and instant oats is how finely they are cut - the finer they are, the faster they cook. But, that also means they're more flour-y and don't quite absorb and hold liquid the way the regular oats do.

For the Oatmeal Banana Bites, I would suggest paying close attention to the size of the bananas, go for large very ripe bananas, and consider blending them in a food processor, blender, or immersion blender to get plenty of liquid. And, if the batter is too dry after that, add 1 tablespoon of nondairy milk to the batter until the batter is more moist. Raisins, dried fruit, or carob chocolate chips go really well in this recipe. I recently made these and they didn’t turn out as good as the first time, and I think the issue was the blending of the bananas and they weren’t as ripe, so give the blending a whirl.

As for sautéing with veggie broth, you may want to keep the heat low, start with a ¼ cup of water or veg broth, and then once that gets warm, add your onions or your veggies, adding liquid periodically until the veggies are cooked through.